One Photo -Two Jewellery Projects by Heide Mearns

Some images are so appealing you can’t stop working with them. This is what happened to Heide Mearns when she was looking at a flower design for her next project.

The little blue flower on the iPad Mini , the one that started it all…

Heide had a photo of a little blue flower on her iPad Mini she wanted to use for a bracelet focal piece.

The final drawing on the iPad Mini

We had a look at iDraw a great iPad app for precise drawing, I gave her a little bit of guidance on how to use the app and off she went!

Drawing pasted to Sterling silver sheet

This drawing was traced and pasted to thin paper, then glued to the sheet silver ready for cutting out.

The finished sweat soldered bracelet focal on leather band

Cutting, filing sanding and soldering the pieces together, adding a couple of silver straps on the back, so it could be easily attached to different leather bands and that was one piece finished!

Same design, different technique

Heide decided to use the same drawing for the next project, large scale filigree made from flattened 1.5 mm wire. For this project the wire is passed through the rolling mill until it is to the thickness required, then shaped and filed to fit nicely.

Starting the soldering of the sterling wire elements

Cleaning up after soldering: pickling – filing and sanding and finally tumbled to polish.

Finished projects

It was a fun journey, for Heide of course, but also for me, observing the progress, this was a nice example of where one simple line drawing could go. Nice work Heide!